The Intellectual Life

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Self Help, Education

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1873

About the author

Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834 - 1894)...

Reviews

[Kazen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It got me thinking about what it means to live an "intellectual life", how to spend my time (I tend to be an all or nothing type), and what I want to strive for.

More importantly, it's the first real 'thinker' of a book I've read it a while. I'm used to stretching my brain in my second language but it's been some time since I've done it in my first. Nothing wrong with escapist reading, of course, but the mental gymnastics felt good. Must do more.

[Jon Norimann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Intellectual Life was a surprise to me. It is an excellent book. "Intellectual" could have been left out of the title as Hamerton asks and at least tries to answer deep fundamental questions about life in general. Many of these questions are of the basic kind you dont often see asked anywhere and even more seldom answered. The style is in letter form and the language used is direct.

Age is always an issue when a work becomes around 100 years old. "The Intellectual Life" was written in 1873 and feels a bit dated when touching some issues, like race and gender. That said Hamertons treatment of these issues was probably modern for that time. Due to the basic approach most of the questions and answers in the book are as valid today as when Hamerton wrote them.

As one of few books that really teaches you something new and important "The Intellectual Life" is a joy to read and recommended to everyone.

[Zachary Rudolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is said that beer drinkers are slow, and a little stupid; that they have an ox-like placidity not quite favorable to any brilliant intellectual display. But there are times when this placidity is what the laboring brain most needs. After the agitations of too active thinking there is safety in a tankard of ale.”

[شمس · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essence of intellectual living does not reside in extent of science or in perfection of expression, butane. Constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts. (Preface)

It is one of the happiest privileges of the high intellectual life that is can elevate us to regions of disinterested though, where all personal anxieties are forgotten. (1.6)

The reading practiced by most people, by all who do not set before themselves intellectual culture as one of the definite aims of life, is remarkable for the regularity with which it neglects all the great authors of the past. (10.9)

We require a firm resolution to resist this invasion of what is new, because it flows like an unceasing river, and unless we protect our time against it by some solid embankment of unshakable rule and resolution, every nook and cranny of it will be filled and flooded. (10.9)

__________
While reading The Book Lover's Enchiridion , there were two passages which, for me, stood out above the rest; the first came from Frederic Harrison's The Choice of Books, and the second came from this work by Hamerton.

Written as a series of letters to real and fictional people on the following subjects:
-The Physical Basis
-The Moral Basis
-Of Education
-The Power of Time
-The Influences of Money
-Custom and Tradition
-Women and Marriage
-Aristocracy and Democracy
-Society and Solitude
-Intellectual Hygienics
-Trades and Professions
-Surroundings

This is a truly beautiful and essential work.
__________
He found a quiet happiness in this regularity; indeed, happiness is said to be more commonly found in habit than in anything else, so deeply does it satisfy a great permanent instinct of our nature. But a minute regularity of habit is objectionable, because it can only be practicable at home, and is compatible only with an existence of the most absolute tranquility. (1.3)

We are told that we ought to learn this thing and that, as if every new ingredient did not affect the whole flavour of the mind. There is a sort of intellectual chemistry which is quite as marvellous as material chemistry, and thousand times more difficult to observe. One general truth may, however, be relied upon as surely and permanently as our own. It is true that everything we learn affects the whole character of the mind. (3.1)

. . . passed at once into the atmosphere of ancient thought, and breathed its delicate perfume. (3.2)

To have one favourite study and live in it with happy familiarity, and cultivate very portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a small yeoman proprietor cultivates his own land, this, as to study at least, is the most enviable intellectual life. (3.2)

That a modern may be taught to think in Latin, is proved by the early education of Montaigne . . . What I am going to suggest is a Utopian dream, but let us suppose that hundred fathers could be found in all Europe, all of this way of thinking, all resolved to submit to some inconvenience in order that their sons might speak Latin as a living language. A small island might be rented near the coast of Italy, and in that island Latin alone might be permitted. Just as the successive governments of France maintain the establishments of Sèvres an the Gobelins to keep the manufactures of porcelain and tapestry up to a recognised high standard of excellence, so this Latin island might be maintained to give more vivacity to scholarship. If there were but one little corner of ground on the wide earth where pure Latin was constantly spoken, our knowledge of the classic writers would become far more sympathetically intimate. After living in the Latin island we should think in latin as we read, and read without translating. (3.3)

The finest intellects are as remarkable for the ease with which they resist and throw off what does not concern them as for the permanence with which their own truths engrave themselves. (3.10)

It may be accepted for certain, to begin with, that men who like yourself seriously care for culture, and make it, next to moral duty, the principal object of their lives, are but little exposed to waste time in downright frivolity of any kind. You may be perfectly idle at your own times, and perfectly frivolous even, whenever you have a mind to be frivolous, but then you will b clearly aware how the time is passing, and you will throw it away knowingly, as the most careful of money-economists will throw away a few sovereigns in a confessedly foolish amusement, merely for the relief of a break in the habit of his life. To a man of your tastes and temper there is no danger of wasting too much time so long as the waste is intentional; but you are exposed to the time-losses of a much more insidious character. (4.1)

The secret of order and proportion in our studies is the true secret of economy in time. To have one main pursuit and several auxiliaries, but none that are not auxiliary, is the true principle of arrangement. (4.1)

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? (4.2)

Few people realise the full evil of an interruption, few people know all that is implied by it. (4.3)

To advance from a hundred pounds to a thousand is not an intellectual advance, and there is no intellectual interest ion the addition of a cipher at the bankers’. Simply to accumulate more that you are never to use is, from the intellectual point of view, as stupid an operation as can be imagined. (5.2)

Rich people have a fancy for spending money very uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as accessible as daylight. I have a rich friend who travels more, and buys more costly things, than I do, but he does not really learn more or advance farther in the twelvemonth . . . If he is getting benefit at St Petersburg he is missing the benefit I am getting round my house, and in it. The sum of the year’s benefit seems to be surprising alike in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of thoroughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well occupied as you — he is certainly not better occupied. When I open a noble volume I say to myself, " Now the only Croesus that I envy is he who is reading a better book than this.” (5.4)

You value and enjoy your solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your hours. (7.6)

There is really, in nature, such a thing as high life . . . a life of health, of sound morality, of disinterested intellectual activity, of freedom from petty cares, is higher than a life of disease, and vice, and stupidity, and sordid anxiety. (8.2)

It may be observed, further, that language itself is defiled by the vulgarity of the popular taste. (8.2)

They read nothing, they learn nothing, they think of nothing but money and the satisfaction of their appetites . . . Their ignorance passes belief, and is accompanied by an absolute self-satisfaction. (8.2)

The sort of influence most to be dreaded is this. Society is, and must be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest realities. It requires some degree of reality to produce the appearance, but not a sub- stantial reality. Gilding is the perfect type of what Society requires. A certain quantity of gold is necessary for the work of the gilder. With a very small quantity, and skill in applying the metal so as to cover a large surface is of greater consequence than the weight of the metal itself. The mind of a fashionable person is a carefully gilded mind. (9.2)

All that I care to insist upon is that there is a degree of incompatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives which makes it necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the other as our own. There is no hostility, there need not be any uncharitable feeling on one side or the other, but there must be a resolute choice between the two. If you decide for the intellectual life, you will incur a definite loss to set against your gain. Your existence may have calmer and profounder satisfactions, but it will be less amusing, and even in an appreciable degree less human; less in harmony, I mean, with the common instincts and feelings of humanity. For the fashionable world, although decorated by habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object, and arrives at enjoyment by those methods which the experience of generations has proved to be most efficacious. Variety of amusement, frequent change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, pleasant occupation of the mind without fatigue—these things do indeed make existence agreeable to human nature, and the science of living agreeably is better understood in the fashionable society of England than by laborious students and savans. The life led by that society is the true heaven of the natural man, who likes to have frequent feasts and a hearty appetite, who enjoys the varying spec- tacle of wealth, and splendour, and pleasure, who loves to watch, from the Olympus of his personal ease, the curious results of labour in which he takes no part, the interesting ingenuity of the toiling world below. In exchange for these varied pleasures of the spectator the intellectual life can offer you but one satisfaction, for all its promises are reducible simply to this, that you shall come at last, after infinite labour, into contact with some great reality—that you shall know, and do, in such sort that you will feel yourself on firm ground and be recognized—probably not much applauded, but yet recognized—as a fellow-labourer by other knowers and doers. Before you come to this, most of your present accomplishments will be abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and insufficient; but one or two of them will be turned to better account, and will give you after many years a tranquil self-respect, and, what is still rarer and better, a very deep and earnest reverence for the greatness which is above you. Severed from the vanities of the Illusory, you will live with the realities of knowledge, as one who has quitted the painted scenery of the theatre to listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the granite hills. (9.4)

The lonely man is lord of his own hours and of his own purse; his days are long and unbroken, he escapes from every form of ostentation, and may live quite simply and sincerely in great calm breadths of leisure. I knew one who passed his summers in the heart of a vast forest, in a common thatched cot- tage with furniture of common deal, and for this retreat he quitted very gladly a rich fine house in the city. He wore nothing but old clothes, read only a few old books, without the least regard to the opinions of the learned, and did not take in a newspaper. On the wall of his habitation he inscribed with a piece of charcoal a quotation from De Senancour to this effect: "In the world a man lives in his own age ; in solitude, in all the ages. "I observed in him the effects of a lonely life, and he greatly aided my observations by frankly communicating his experiences. That solitude had become inexpressibly dear to him, but he admitted one evil consequence of it, which was an increasing unfitness for ordinary society, though he cherished a few tried friendships, and was grateful to those who loved him and could enter into his humour. He had acquired a horror of towns and crowds, not from nervousness, but because he felt im- prisoned and impeded in his thinking, which needed the depths of the forest, the venerable trees, the communication with primaeval nature, from which he drew a mysterious yet necessary nourishment for the peculiar activity of his mind. I found that his case answered very exactly to the sentence he quoted from De Sdnancour ; he lived less in his own age than others do, but he had a fine compensation in a strangely vivid understanding of other ages. Like De Senancour, he had a strong sense of the transitoriness of what is transitory, and a passionate preference for all that the human mind conceives to be relatively or absolutely permanent. This trait was very observable in his talk about the peoples of antiquity, and in the delight he took in dwelling rather upon everything which they had in common with ourselves than on those differences which are more obvious to the modern spirit. (9.6)

Since he had no profession his leisure was unlimited, and he employed it in educating himself without any other purpose than this, the highest purpose of all, to become a cultivated man. (10.4)

For the work of the intellect to be clear and healthy, a great deal of free play of the mind is absolutely necessary. Harness is good for an hour or two at a time, but the finest intellects have never lived in harness . . . the truth is, that we need both the discipline of harness and the abundant nourishment of the free pasture. (10.7)

It is clear to both of us that much of what we read in the newspapers is useless to our culture. A large proportion of newspaper-writing is occupied with speculations on what is likely to happen in the course of a few months ; therefore, by waiting until the time is past, we know the event without having wasted time in speculations which could not affect it. Another rather considerable fraction of newspaper matter consists of small events which have interest for the day, owing to their novelty, but which will not have the slightest permanent importance. The whole press of a newspaper-reading country, like England or America, may be actively engaged during the space of a week or a fortnight in discussing some incident which everybody will have forgotten in six months ; and besides these sensational incidents, there are hundreds of less notorious ones, often fictitious, inserted simply for the
temporary amusement of the reader. The greatest evil of newspapers, in their effect on the intellectual life, is the enormous importance which they are obliged to attach to mere novelty. From the intellectual point of view, it is of no consequence whether a thought occurred twenty-two centuries ago to Aristotle or yesterday evening to Mr. Charles Darwin, and it is one of the distinctive marks of the truly intellectual to be able to take a hearty interest in all truth, independently of the date of its discovery. The emphasis given by newspapers to novelty exhibits things in wrong relations, as the lantern shows you what is nearest at the cost of making the general landscape appear darker by the contrast. (10.8)

According to this system it is presumed that the hours between breakfast and lunch are the best hours. In many cases they are so. A person in fair health, after taking a light early breakfast without any heavier stimulant than tea or coffee, finds himself in a state of freshness highly favourable to sound and agree- able thinking. His brain will be in still finer order if the breakfast has been preceded by a cold bath, with friction and a little exercise. The feeling of freshness, cleanliness, and moderate exhilaration, will last for several, hours, and during those hours the intellectual work will probably be both lively and reasonable. (10.10)

In the division of time it is an excellent rule for adults to keep it as much as possible in large masses not giving a quarter of an nour to one occupation and a quarter to another, but giving three, four, or five hours to one thing at a time . . . And although, when a man's time is unavoidably broken up into fragments, no talent of a merely auxiliary kind can be more precious than that of turning each of those fragments to advantage, it is still true that he whose time is at his own disposal will do his work most calmly, most deliberately, and therefore on the whole most thoroughly and perfectly, when he keeps it in fine masses. The mere knowledge that you have three or four clear hours before you is in itself a great help to the spirit of thoroughness, both in study and in production. It is agreeable too, when the sitting has come to an end, to perceive that a definite advance is the result of it, and advance in anything is scarcely perceptible in less than three or four hours. (10.10)

It is easy to see that a minute obedience to the clock is unintellectual in its very nature, for the intellect is not a piece of mechanism as a clock is, and cannot easily be made to act like one. There may be perfect correspondence between the locomotives and the clocks on a railway, for if the clocks are pieces of mechanism the locomotives are so likewise, but the intellect always needs a certain looseness and latitude as to time. Very broad rules are the best, such as "Write in the morning, read in the afternoon, see friends in the evening," or else “ Study one day and produce another alternately," or even “Work one week and see the world another week alternately.” (10.10)